The World Council of Churches has criticised US President Donald Trump’s proposal for dividing Israel and Palestine as “an ultimatum, not a path to peace”.
The US President, joined at the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced his plan on Tuesday. It creates a Palestinian state with a capital including areas of East Jerusalem but allows Israel to maintain control of contested West Bank settlements. The plan was immediately rejected by Palestinians with President Mahmoud Abbas describing it as the “slap of the century”.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, said the plan was developed with no meaningful participation from the Palestinian people.
“It constitutes an ultimatum, rather than a real, sustainable or just solution,” he said. “No just peace can be established for either Palestinians or Israelis with such a plan.”
Tveit said that based on the WCC’s analysis of the document, the proposal “clearly gives to one side – Israel – rights they don’t have according to international law, while the other side – the Palestinian people – lose part of what little remains to them today, even the recognition under international law of being occupied, and their aspirations for a viable independent state of their own with East Jerusalem – not just a remote neighbourhood thereof beyond the Separation Wall – as its capital”.
“This proposal recognizes might as right, and disregards principles of international law, justice and accountability,” he said, adding that it “makes permanent the fragmentation of Palestinian territory in a matrix of Israeli control”.
Tveit – who expressed fears the proposed plan would “provoke renewed unrest and violence, and serve only to empower extreme views and actors on all sides” – urged the international community not to support the proposal or recognise its implementation and called upon the Israeli Government and Palestinian Authority to “recommit to a process of dialogue and negotiations on these foundations”.
“We affirm the essential role of the United Nations in fostering dialogue based on principles of International Law and for joint efforts to find a sustainable solution for just peace for all. And we call on the government of the United States to strive to act in a less biased fashion in encouraging, supporting and facilitating such a process.”
The plan was broadly welcomed by US evangelicals who said it recognised the Bible as “legal”.
